1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic driver installation method and system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an automatic driver installation method and system for automatically installing drivers by receiving emulation information and model information from a printer or a multi-functional device, and by providing a unified driver installation module including all drivers corresponding to emulations included in the printer or the multi-functional device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various kinds of printers or multi-functional devices (MFDs) have been developed. An MFD is a device that includes functions of a printer, copier, and scanner in a single device. A driver for driving an MFD should be installed in a host device connected to such an MFD in order to perform a printing or scanning process using the MFD. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,015 entitled “Method And Apparatus For Providing Remote Printer Resource Management” issued to Martin et al. discloses a system having a host device and a printer in which the printer has a bi-directional data communications capability.
An MFD includes at least one emulation in order to print or scan data received from a host device connected thereto. There are various kinds of emulations which can be included. According to a model of an MFD, emulations included in the MFD are configured as a combination of various emulations. To drive an emulation that supports any model of the MFD, a driver corresponding to the emulation is required to be installed in the host device. Such a driver is included in a driver installation module.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional installation module corresponding to a number of models. Referring to FIG. 1, a first installation module 20, a second installation module 22, and a third installation module 24 are provided in order to drive a first model 10, a second model 12, and a third model 14, respectively. That is, if the emulations 11 which are supported by the first model 10 are printer control language (PCL) and Postscript (PS), drivers 21 included in the first installation module 20 include a PCL driver and a PS driver. Also, if emulations 13 which are supported by the second model 12 are PCL and TWAIN, drivers 23 included in the second installation module 22 include a PCL driver and a TWAIN driver. For reference, TWAIN is an application program interface (API) standard of a scanner. Further, if emulations 15 which are supported by the third model 14 are PCL, Samsung printer language (SPL), and TWAIN, drivers 25 included in the third installation module 24 include a PCL driver, an SPL driver, and a TWAIN driver. That is, drivers corresponding to the emulations supported by each model are included in each driver installation module.
As described above, an installation module corresponding to a model is made by determining the types of drivers included in the installation module based on the emulations supported by each model. That is, a developer is required to make an installation module corresponding to each model. Therefore, significant time and cost are needed to make a driver installation module for each model.
For example, when a user executes an installation module to install a plurality of drivers, the user is required to manually select drivers that the user wants to install. Therefore, the user may encounter a great degree of difficulty in installing drivers.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method to quickly and easily determine what emulations are included in an apparatus and thereafter, quickly and easily select corresponding drivers for each.